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GSOC 2012 Project Ideas

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Welcome!

Welcome to the Joomla! Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2012 project ideas page. As we move forward with the 2012 version of the Joomla! GSoC, we will use this page to develop possible project ideas. Please note that anyone who is interested can participate in this process. You do not have to be a GSoC student or mentor to suggest possible project ideas. Please keep in mind that projects need to be realistically something that is able to be functionally completed by a student working full time for about eight weeks. Thanks!

If you are interested in applying as a student please see our application template. You will need to register with Google and submit through their GSOC program.

If you are interested in participating as a student please review the materials on applying that are available at Google. We strongly encourage you to ask questions about process and ideas on the mailing list.

Ideas

Opportunities exist for students to work with projects from either the Joomla CMS, the Joomla Platform or in some cases a combination of both.

In addition to this ideas list, the Joomla! Community is able to voice their opinion on features they would like to see via the Joomla! Idea Pool. Those wishing to add ideas to this listing are encouraged to review the Idea Pool and base their idea on the input received there. You can also view the past lists for 2010 and 2009, which may be useful for reference. We ask that you keep ideas realistic for the time frame that students will have to complete their projects.

Unless a mentor has proposed a specific project, mentors from the mentor pool will be matched with student projects. However members of the mentor pool are available to answer questions on the Joomla GSoC mailing list.

Joomla CMS

Project: Language Installation

Brief Explanation: Create an interface to install language packs from a generated list of accredited language packs during Joomla installation and subsequently from the administrator interface, either the extension manager or the language manager.

Expected Results: The goal is to have code implementing this functionally complete and in a format ready for testings by the Joomla Bug Squad as a new feature in the CMS using the normal new feature process.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, JSON, web services

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Project: CMS Unit Testing

Brief explanation: The Joomla CMS has its own set of classes that augment the Joomla platform but these are not well tested. The goal of this project is to improve the code coverage by writing unit tests for library classes specific to the Joomla CMS.

Expected Results: The student will be expected to review the current code coverage for the Joomla CMS libraries (/libraries/cms) and write and agreed-upon number of unit tests with particular attention to packages and classes that are below 50% coverage.

Knowledge Prerequisite: PHP, PHPUnit

Difficulty: Medium

Project: Query optimization

Brief explanation: Profile the queries in the CMS and optimize them, insuring that they remain database agnostic.

Project: Batch processing management/scheduler

Brief explanation: Brief explanation:Manage batch job’s processing, create, schedule and run jobs, such as backup,virus scan, billing, reports, emailing and much more

Expected Results: The student will be expected to build an O.S. independent solution that act as a wrapper to manage jobs, allowing to manage tasks from third party extensions too, in a easy way simplifying the Joomla webmaster life

Project: Add Article Image support to Core Content Modules

Brief explanation: Joomla 2.5.x ships with several core content modules. These modules can display article lists or links. However they do not support bringing in article images. This project would be to make some minor code updates to all the core content modules to add article image support and parameters. Some basic parameters would be to show / hide the article image, specify a thumbnail size, enable or disable article links on the image, and whether or not to respect the image's proportion when resized as a thumbnail.

Expected Results: The student will be expected to modify and update Joomla's core content modules and make modifications to the multiple files in the MVC structure to add parameters, and add additional code to the module's HTML output. The module should interface with the Joomla core class JImage as well to create the thumbnail image.

Knowledge Prerequisite: PHP, Joomla! Framework

Difficulty: Easy

Mentor: Chad Windnagle

Project: Trash Manager

Brief Explanation: Create a component that functions similarly to com_checkin that allows you to manage trash items across all tables.

Expected Results: It should be able to pull records in 'trashed' status that have -2 as the value and allow selection of single deletion, mass deletion, deletion by table, etc. Include an integrated notification to users that they have trashed item.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, PHP, MySQL

Difficulty: Medium

Project: Data Dictionary

Brief Explanation: Create a data dictionary that will expand on current core database tables to add support for more commonly used data and will be supported on newly created Joomla databases. Also create a process for updating and managing the data dictionary, and document the current data model.

Expected Results: A data dictionary will make it easier for different developers to standardize on where to create, read, update, and delete some commonly stored data (such as user profile information), instead of the current situation where multiple extensions may potentially duplicate the same data.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, PHP, MySQL

Difficulty: Medium

Joomla Platform

The Joomla Platform allows for ideas that can work within the Joomla CMS, or could be completely separate applications that have no connection at all. The Joomla Platform allows for applications to be built for the command line, process daemons and the web. The follow list outlines some ideas that will be immediately useful for the Joomla Platform project that a student may consider taking on. In addition to PHP libraries, the Joomla Platform also ships with MooTools and project ideas can be related to client-side operations as well as server-side. One emphasis on this year's list is on the incorporation of packages for accessing web services, however other ideas for libraries and packages are welcome. In some instances multiple students may work on different aspects of the project. Two examples of this are unit testing and JStemmer.

Expected Results: A fully developed, unit tested and documented set of classes (specific number and choices will be finalized in discussion with the mentor and platform maintainers) and a simple platform application illustrating use.

Project: Library to Compile and Compress Javascript and CSS Files

Brief explanation: Compiling and compressing javascript and CSS files can substantially the improve performance of a web site. Providing a package to do this will help the CMS and other web applications.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, PHP, javascript

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Expected Results: A platform package with testing and documentation.

Project: JMailer

Brief explanation: Build out a JMailer class to replace PHPMailer in the platform. This should build upon preliminary work that has already been implemented and is available here.

Expected Results: A platform package for JMailer that provides the same functionality as PHPMailer, with testing and documentation.

Project: Social Package

Brief explanation: Over the last several years, social media has become a dominant force in online media. Based on the number of extensions interacting with various social media APIs, it would be logical to build a Social package for the Joomla! Platform that provides a common and simplified interface to post and retrieve data from various social media networks. JGitHub and its sub-classes can be used as an example in building this package.

Expected Results: A package of classes which can be used to interact with various social media APIs and can be further extended in the future for new APIs and endpoints.

Project: JStemmer

Brief explanation: Currently the Joomla CMS includes only a Joomla stemmer for English while the Snowball stemmer is wrapped. We would like to move the English stemmer to the Joomla platform and make the class useful by adding Joomla stemmers for other languages.

Expected Results: A platform class for stemming with subclasses for a number of specific languages (number and specific languages to be determined in discussion with mentor and the search and translation teams). The final product should be fully documented and unit tested.

Project: JCommerce

Brief explanation: Create a commerce class based on preliminary work that has been done.

Expected Results: A set of classes for interacting with Open Street Map.

Project: Platform Unit Testing

Brief explanation: The Joomla Platform has a good suite of automated Unit Tests, but code coverage is lacking in some areas. The goal of this project is to improve the code coverage by writing unit tests for the Joomla Platform.

Expected Results: The student will be expected to review the current code coverage report for the Joomla Platform and write and agreed-upon number of unit tests with particular attention to packages that are below 50% coverage. Preference should be given to non-deprecated classes but the student may choose from either the core tree (/libraries/joomla) or the legacy tree (/libraries/legacy).

Knowledge Prerequisite: PHP, PHPUnit

Difficulty: Medium

Platform Applications

The creation of useful platform applications that can also serve as exemplars for other platform developers is a third type of project. These applications, whether web or command line based, are built on the Joomla! Platform.

Project: Platform Application to Create PHAR Packages

Brief explanation: Create a platform application that creates PHAR packages for each package in the Joomla Platform. The goal here is to make the platform accessible to developers in a modular fashion so that they can access only the packages they need for a given application.

Expected Results: A working and documented application for creating PHAR packages.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, PHP

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Project: Platform Example or Building Block Applications

Brief explanation: The Platform Examples repository currently contains a number of very simple sample "Hello world!" applications. Create a number of example web and command line applications using the platform API that could be used as building blocks by developers building more complex applications. Examples would include authentication, cache, form, filesystem, http, and streams classes.

Expected Results: A set of fully implemented Joomla Platform applications that can be easily adapted by developers. Specific applications should be listed in your proposal and will be finalized in discussion with the mentor. Ideally every platform package would have an example application, so there is room for multiple projects.

Knowledge Prerequisite: Joomla Platform, PHP

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Project: Joomla Translations

Brief explanation: Create a platform application for management of the translation process, which will be a kind of Facebook Self-Translation App for Joomla! communities to have better translation.

Expected Results: The application will make better translations for Joomla! It will help non-English speaking translation teams to get feedback about translation quality from people, who speak the same language. So translation teams can involve more volunteers in translation process. It will help also extension developers to translate their software. It will enable ability to submit a new extension translation INI file in English and get the translated version from the translation teams.

Knowledge Prerequisite: PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, Joomla! Framework

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: Edvard Ananyan

Project: Joomla Platform Application Directory

Brief explanation: The Joomla project has several directory sites dedicated to extensions for the Joomla CMS (the JED) and free and commercial resources (the JRD). With the release of the Joomla Platform, and it's particular attention to allowing other types of applications (not just the CMS), there is a need for a new website to act as a directory for these applications. The goal of this project is to build a new Joomla Platform application (not a Joomla component but a full application) to serve as this directory.

Expected Results: The student will be expected to build a new web application based on JApplicationWeb and the new Universal Content Model (UCM) package loosely inline with the other Joomla directory sites (the JED and the JRD). This is expected to be a "phase 1" project where the features will include user registration (agreeing to terms) and login, simple information pages (like Joomla articles) and listing pages for Joomla Platform applications. Suitable fields will be required and should include such things as application type (command line application, daemon, web application, web service, etc), what the application does, how to get it and so forth. The student is not expected to design the final template but should look to Bootstrap for basic inspiration. Simple categorization will also be required. Global search can be added if time permits.